Russia-Ukraine updates: Blinken says US investigating drone crash

There has been a lot of talk about Tuesday’s collision between a Russian Su-27 fighter jet and a US military “Reaper” surveillance drone.

So what is an MQ-9 “Reaper” drone? Here is basic information from the US Air Force and its maker, General Atomics.

• The MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle can loiter at up to 15,240m (50,000 feet) for more than 27 hours, gathering intelligence with sophisticated cameras, sensors and radars.
• It has a 20m (66-foot) wingspan, a Honeywell engine, can carry 1,770kg (3,900 pounds) of fuel, and can travel at a speed of 240 knots “true air speed”.
• The Reaper, which was delivered to the air force 16 years ago, can also be equipped with weapons such as air-to-ground missiles.

What are the advantages of drones?

• Drones are generally less expensive than crewed aircraft with similar capabilities and are safer for operators since they do not require a pilot. Unlike most other aircraft, drones can loiter for hours gathering intelligence material.
• They cost about $3,500 per flight hour, compared with, for example, an F-16, which costs about $8,000 per flight hour to operate, according to General Atomics.

Can an MQ-9 defend itself?

• General Atomics says the MQ-9 has “demonstrated an air-to-air weapons capability” in air force tests.
• It can also be equipped with a “Self Protect Pod” that can detect threats and deploy countermeasures against surface-to-air weapons.

Russia says it will react “proportionately” to any future US “provocations” as tensions raged over the drone incident.

“Flights of American strategic unmanned aerial vehicles off the coast of Crimea are provocative in nature, which creates preconditions for an escalation of the situation in the Black Sea zone,” the Russian defence ministry said.

“Russia is not interested in such a development of events but it will continue to respond proportionately to all provocations.”

The US’s “increased” intelligence gathering on Russia led to the recent drone incident, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said after a phone call with his US counterpart.

It is Washington’s “increased intelligence activities against the interests of the Russian Federation” as well as the “noncompliance with the restricted flight zone” declared by Moscow that have led to the incident with the US drone, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The US insists its MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying in international airspace – a claim disputed by Moscow, which says it intruded into an area declared off-limits by Russian authorities.

Canada is sending more military assistance to Ukraine, Defence Minister Anita Anand said during a US-hosted Defense Contact Group in support of Kyiv.

Canada will donate about 8,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition as well as 12 air defence missiles sourced from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) inventory, read a statement from Canada’s defence ministry.

The shipments of four Leopard 2 battle tanks are under way, added the report.

Canada has committed eight Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine in total, four of which have already been delivered to Poland with a team of CAF personnel training Ukrainian soldiers on their use, the ministry said.

All of the tanks – as well as the previously announced armoured recovery vehicle, ancillary equipment and ammunition donated by Canada – are expected to be in Ukraine in the coming weeks.

Top US General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he planned to talk to his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

The call would take place after a Russian jet collided with a US surveillance drone, causing it to crash.

Milley said there were still questions as to whether Russia meant to down the drone, even though the moments that led up to its crash were “intentional”.

“We know that the intercept was intentional. We know that the aggressive behaviour was intentional,” Milley said.

However, whether the collision itself was intentional was still unclear, he told reporters at a briefing.

Russia is “making small, tactical advances, [but] at great cost” near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Mark Milley told reporters.

The US will continue to fly wherever international law allows, defence chief Lloyd Austin told reporters after speaking with Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu.

“I just got off the phone with my Russian counterpart, Minister Shoigu,” Austin said at a Pentagon press briefing. “As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s important that great powers be models of transparency and communication and the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.”

The US has said it was working on declassifying surveillance footage from the drone that would show Tuesday’s crash.

Austin’s comments came just after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Washington was well aware that Moscow had established airspace restrictions over the Black Sea region since the start of the war.

That Austin and Shoigu were talking underscored the seriousness of the encounter over the Black Sea. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, contact between the two military leaders has been limited, with Russian officials refusing to take US military calls in the early months of the war.

Austin and Shoigu first spoke about Russia’s invasion in May 2022. At the time, it was the highest-level US-Russian contact of the war.

In October, they spoke twice in three days as the threat of an escalation was high. Shoigu had accused Ukraine of planning to use a dirty bomb, a claim strongly rejected by the US and its Western allies who accused Russia of seeking a false pretext to justify further escalation, potentially including the use of a tactical nuclear weapon.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke over the phone with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, the Russian defence ministry said as reported by Interfax state-run media.

The conversation took place “at the initiative of the American side”, it added.

While no details were provided on what was discussed, the call comes as Washington and Moscow are ramping up their confrontational rhetoric over a US surveillance drone that crashed near Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.

The US said a Russian jet hit the propeller of the drone, while Moscow says no contact was made and blamed “sharp manoeuvring” by the US aircraft for the incident.

The US is “ignoring” Russia’s established airspace restrictions around the Black Sea, Moscow’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov said.

In an interview on state TV, Lavrov said Russia established limits on flights in the region after the start of its military campaign in Ukraine, a fact the US was well aware of.

His comment came after Washington’s accusation that Moscow caused the crash of one of its military surveillance drones – a case that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said was being investigated.

Blinken, who was speaking to reporters during a visit to Ethiopia, described the incident as “reckless” and “unsafe” but declined to provide details on the intent or motivation behind it.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says its staff held productive talks with Ukrainian officials in Warsaw, Poland and made “very good progress” on a set of policies that could underpin a new IMF lending programme for the war-torn country.

Vahram Stepanyan, the IMF resident representative to Ukraine, said staff met with Ukrainian officials from March 8 to 15 on their request for an IMF-supported programme.

The discussions should be concluded in the “coming days”, Stepanyan said.

US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price told the MSNBC news channel the drone’s crash into the Black Sea was likely an unintentional act by Russia.

Moscow warned Washington on Wednesday to keep away from its air space after the incident a day earlier.

Russians should be allowed to criticise top military commanders but ordinary soldiers are beyond criticism, says Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group.

“I think that the law against discrediting should not apply to the command staff – that is me, the minister of defence and other leaders who make or can make mistakes during a special military operation,” Prigozhin said on Telegram.

“Society should say what it deems necessary about them,” said Prigozhin, who has publicly and repeatedly criticised Russian military leaders about how they have conducted the war in Ukraine.

“Only the soldier is sacred,” he posted. “So soldiers should be left alone.”

Prigozhin has been involved in a power struggle with the defence ministry and accused the military of not sharing ammunition with the Wagner Group.

Russia’s ambassador to the US says he told Washington that Moscow would “no longer allow anybody to violate our waters”, the state TASS news agency reports.

Anatoly Antonov was summoned by the US State Department after the US drone crashed over the Black Sea on Tuesday.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad expressed his support for Russia in its war in Ukraine during talks with Putin at the Kremlin.

In a televised meeting with Putin, al-Assad said Russia was fighting neo-Nazis and “old Nazis” in Ukraine, according to a Russian translation.

The Syrian leader said the West had taken in “old Nazis” and was now supporting them.

He added that he envisaged tangible economic results as the pair spoke ahead of formal talks that Syrian officials hope will bring more Russian investments to support the country.

Russia’s military support for al-Assad was a crucial turning point in Syria’s brutal civil war in 2011, which had begun as a pro-democracy movement.

The German government has called on Moscow to extend the Black Sea grain deal beyond 60 days.

Speaking at a regular news conference, a spokesperson said the deal should continue indefinitely.

Since Russia and Ukraine signed the United Nations-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative in Turkey on July 22, millions of tonnes of grain have been exported from Ukrainian ports, helping lower global food prices.

Russia has said it will try to retrieve the remains of the US drone that fell into the Black Sea.

Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told the Rossiya 1 TV channel: “I don’t know whether we will be able to retrieve it or not but it has to be done. And we’ll certainly work on it. I hope, of course, successfully.”

“Secondly … the Americans keep saying they’re not taking part in military operations. This is the latest confirmation that they are directly participating in these activities – in the war,” he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to Denmark after its government said it would create a fund of 7 billion Danish kroner ($1bn) for military, civilian and business aid for Ukraine.

On Twitter, the Ukrainian president said: “Sincerely grateful to Denmark’s parliament, PM [Mette Frederiksen] and Government for establishing Ukraine Support Fund. More than $1 billion in military, humanitarian & economic aid to Ukraine is a guarantee of bringing our common victory over the aggressor and the return of peace to Europe closer!”

Sincerely grateful to 🇩🇰 @folketinget, PM @Statsmin and Government for establishing 🇺🇦 Support Fund. More than $1 billion in military, humanitarian & economic aid to Ukraine is a guarantee of bringing our common victory over the aggressor and the return of peace to Europe closer!

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 15, 2023

Here are four maps we update daily, charting the latest war developments.

The Ukraine war has brought the world to a standstill when urgent action is needed to address growing global poverty, India’s Group of 20 summit negotiator Amitabh Kant said.

Kant’s comments came after the war overshadowed two G20 ministerial meetings in India in the last three weeks.

“Europe cannot bring growth, poverty, global debt, all developmental issues to a standstill across the world,” Kant told reporters.

“Especially when the south is suffering, especially when 75 countries are suffering from global debt, especially when one-third of the world is in recession, especially when 200 million people have gone below [the] poverty line. Can that one war bring the entire world to a standstill?”

“Nutrition has been impacted, health outcomes have been impacted, learning outcomes have been impacted, people have become stunted and wasted, and we are just concerned with one Russia and Ukraine war,” Kant said.

Click here for a roundup of the war’s pivotal events from day 385.

Keep reading:

• Putin calls Ukraine role in Nord Stream blasts ‘sheer nonsense’
• US accuses Russia of downing drone over Black Sea: What we know
• ‘They don’t respect us’: Backlash in Bali as Russians flee war
• US Republican DeSantis calls Ukraine war a ‘territorial dispute’

Pope Francis has called on parties in the war to respect religious sites in Ukraine as the Russian-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) faces eviction.

Ukrainian authorities have given the church a March 29 deadline to vacate its headquarters in the historic Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex. It is the latest move against a church the government says is pro-Russian and collaborating with Moscow.

Referring specifically to the Lavra monastery, Francis asked “the warring parties to respect religious sites” and praised people who devote their lives to prayer, “be they of whatever denomination”.

On March 11, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and supporter of Russia’s invasion, asked Francis and other religious leaders to persuade Ukraine to stop its crackdown against the UOC.

US officials have told Russia’s ambassador to Washington that Moscow has to be more careful when flying in international airspace, White House spokesperson John Kirby says.

The Department of State summoned Anatoly Antonov for the first time since the war in Ukraine began to express concerns over the crash of the US drone.

“The message that we delivered to the Russian ambassador is that they need to be more careful in flying in international airspace near US assets that are, again, flying in completely legal ways, conducting missions in support of our national security interests,” Kirby said in an interview with CNN.

“They’re the ones that need to be more careful,” he said.

Kirby added that the MQ-9 surveillance drone had not been recovered and may never be, given the depth of the Black Sea where it went down.

The involvement of Russian fighter jets in the crash of a US spy drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is a signal that Putin is ready to expand the conflict zone, a senior Ukrainian security official says.

“The incident with the American MQ-9 Reaper UAV, provoked by Russia in the Black Sea, is Putin’s signal of readiness to expand the conflict zone with the involvement of other parties,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Twitter.

Russia’s tactic is occurring under “conditions of a strategic loss in the hope of a change in circumstances”, he wrote.

Інцидент з американським БПЛА MQ-9 Reaper, спровокований росією в Чорному морі, – це сигнал путіна про готовність до розширення зони конфлікту із втягуванням інших сторін. Тактика ва-банк – постійне підвищення ставок в умовах стратегічного програшу в надії на зміну обставин.

— Oleksiy Danilov (@OleksiyDanilov) March 15, 2023

Ukraine may defend a $3bn eurobond lawsuit brought by Russia on the basis that it was forced to assume the debt in 2013 because of threats of force from Moscow, the UK’s top court has ruled.

The long-awaited ruling on the lawsuit, which was brought in 2016 and long predates Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, paves the way for a full trial of Ukraine’s case. It concerns billions of dollars that pro-Russian former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich borrowed from Moscow months before mass protests forced him out of office in 2014 and before Russia annexed Crimea later that year.

Zelenskyy hailed the ruling as a “decisive victory” on Twitter.

He wrote, “Today, Ukraine secured another decisive victory against the aggressor. The Court has ruled that Ukraine’s defence based on Russia’s threats of aggression will have a full public trial. Justice will be ours.”

Today Ukraine secured another decisive victory against the aggressor, this time in the UK Supreme Court in the $3bn bonds case. The Court has ruled that Ukraine’s defence based on russia’s threats of aggression will have a full public trial. Justice will be ours.

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 15, 2023

Relations with the US are in a “lamentable state” and at their lowest level, the Kremlin says after Washington accused Russia of downing one of its Reaper drones.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters there had been no high-level contacts with Washington over the incident but said Russia would never refuse to engage in constructive dialogue.